Living Within Our Means

I have always found it hard to manage my money. No matter how much I had, I always wanted more; mainly because I wasted it all on frivolous items that I did not need or never used. At the age of 18, I started working at my first “real” job, and the owner once told me, “You will never be broke as long as you live within your means.” I thought I knew what he was saying, but at this time I was still living with my mom and putting myself through school. It was only in the last year that I have come to truly understood what he was telling me and the value of those words. We are learning to control our impulsive buying habits, put money into savings, and control our overall spending with a budget.

Managing money is neither my husband’s nor my strong suit. One of our biggest fall backs is impulse buying; we see something we like and we do not think twice about charging it to our credit card. All of the sudden, a $20.00 movie has cost us $40.00 with interest by the time we can afford to pay our credit cards off. We are now thinking about several factors before we buy most items: do we truly need this or is it something that we want right now, can we pay cash for this item now, and can we get it cheaper at another retailer. I have found that stopping to think about our purchases has saved us as much as $300.00 a month. We still do some impulse buying every now and then, but I think everyone is allowed to enjoy their hard earned money with a few “non-budget” items.

With the way the economy is, who knows if there will be social security for my husband and me when we want to retire. I don’t want to spend my time on earth working every day to survive; I want to have the comfort of being able to retire when I’m ready to. Also, I never know when I might need some extra money for a surprise problem that arises. There has to be a level of safety, and my starting my savings account is the biggest comfort. I put anywhere from $100.00 to $150.00 a month into my savings account. In one year, I will have $1,200.00 saved. In twenty years, I will hopefully have $24,000.00 saved. This is nowhere near enough to retire with, but at least I will have something to rely on, and my husband is doing the same thing. It is the biggest peace of mind I have had in a very long time.

I believe that living on a budget is the most helpful thing in our household. It has given us a way to see what we are spending in comparison to what we are making. I have broken our budget into several groups: groceries/food, entertainment, bills, and transportation are a few. I allot a certain amount of money into each category at the beginning of the month. We stay within each group’s amount of money every month. I also have a category for overages that is $20.00 just in case one of the bills was a little more than expected or if gas prices rose extremely for that week. I found that the budget has helped me manage my money in the best way. For instance, I’ve learned how to use coupons to my advantage and cut my grocery bill in half. I have also started carpooling with my coworker that lives down the street from me; this has cut my transportation in half.

Living within your means does not mean that you have to pinch every penny that comes your way; it’s a way to live well without putting yourself in debt. It is also hard to adjust to a life of control when I have always been such a free (spending) sprit. If you don’t make extravagant purchases without some planning, and make a workable budget while putting money into a savings account you can live a comfortable life. It takes a lot of work and planning to make lifestyle changes, and my husband and I still have some changes to make, but I believe that if we continue, we will one day live completely within our means and we will never be broke.

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